And those who strive hard for Us, We will most certainly guide them in Our ways; and Allah is most surely with the doers of good. 29:69 The Quran

Behind Iran's Nuclear Imbroglio

Syed Javed Hussain

George W Bush’s multifaceted stand on Iran has thrown a real challenge to his well-wishers in international arena as to consider him as a diplomat of gigantic stature and historical significance or a downright half-wit simpleton who has been bogged down by an authority whose magnitude and significance he is completely unable to assimi-late, understand and exploit.

He started off with ‘access of evil’ mantra netting in Iraq and North Korea along with Iran then trailed off to spew out ‘regime change’ thriller on Iran. With the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq came the hymn bedevilling Iran for supporting ‘terrorism’ and then for the last couple of years the whole world is ensnarled in the propaganda against Iran for clandestinely making ‘nuclear-Islamic-bomb;’ Bush must be having a very scary sleep for the last many years: obsession has no bounds.

What he is to get from a peaceful nation of 60 millions people so far off from the US shores? He is talking everything except oil. Iran’s stand on its nuclear programme has been consistent and quite in lines with the NPT that Iran had signed in 1970. In the beginning of this year on 28th January Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, talking to BBC said that his country was ready to compromise over its nuclear programme. He said that Iran was willing to discuss concerns about an alleged weapons programme and offer guarantees.

Ali Larijani made is abundantly clear that there were no chances that Iran would suspend uranium enrichment. He said, ‘They should not ask a brave nation with very good scientists to expect not to engage in nuclear research,’ However, he called for the resumption of talks in search for a compromise. He said, ‘If they want guarantees of no diversion of nuclear fuel we can reach a formula acceptable to both sides in talks.’

However US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice riding her high horses said there was ‘not much to talk about’. Completely ignoring Iran’s persistent claims that its nuclear programme is peaceful and energy oriented, she said, ‘Iran must not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. It must not be allowed to pursue activities that might lead to a nuclear weapon and on that we are fully united.’ The scary side of the US diplomacy on nuclear issue is that despite the time laps it has not changed its position on Iran a bit despite having no tangible proof to support its over a dozen claims on militarization of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Last months two revealers have put the US strategic stand on Iran in perspective and proved it out rightly wrong rather mischievous. Vilmos Cserveny, a senior director of the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog, in a recent letter addressed to the Chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has described the committee’s claim that the Iranians were trying to acquire nuclear-weapons capability as ‘outrageous and dishonest.’

The letter which was widely reported in the US media last week complained to Rep. Peter Hoekstra that the report by his committee had given ‘incorrect and misleading’ information to the IAEA to try to mislead it.

The committee report had stated that IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei removed a senior inspector ‘for concluding that the purpose of Iran’s nuclear programme is to construct weapons’; in reality, Vilmor Cserveny pointed out, it was Iran, not Mohamed ElBaradei, who had asked for the inspector to be replaced, under a right Tehran enjoys under agreements governing countries’ relationships with the IAEA.’

Another report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, brings the cat out on Iraq. The document said the CIA had learned in late 2002 from a top-level Iraqi contact, then foreign minister Naji Sabri, that ‘Iraq has no past, current, or anticipated future contact with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’ and and ‘Bin Laden was in fact a long-time enemy of Iraq’.

Bush and his acolytes are busy cooking stories to hoodwink the world community to advance their own agenda under the influence of diabolical fanatic Zionist lobby in Washington. Sheer strength of Iran’s argument and honesty of purpose can defeat these liars to bring peace, stability and security to the Gulf region as well as the world along with a just international order as a by product of a principled stand. One wonders why Iran cannot be allowed to enrich uranium to fuel its nuclear energy plants in the presence of tangible, verifiable and trusty supervision of nuclear watchdog IAEA with such huge technological paraphernalia on its disposal to do the job to everyone’s satisfaction: mistrust defies all logic.

If America does not have confidence in Iran to allow it to exploit enrichment technology to make fuel for its energy producing nuclear reactors, then on the same logic, how Iran can trust America and its stooges for the fuel: Iran has to follow a policy of self reliance. Inquisition of George Bush cannot make Iran to unlearn the nuclear full cycle, an achievement that Iranian nation has gained through huge sacrifices and labour of its scientists. It seems quite wishful to expect Iran to shut down the nuclear process entirely after achieving a significant advance at the research and development level. Why cannot the West live with it?

There is absolutely no immediate danger of Iran going for a nuclear weapon so soon. The level of enrichment needed for nuclear bombs is far higher than the 3.5 per cent that Iran has achieved. Experts say it would take Iran a decade to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb from its current centrifuges that too if its enhances the enrichment level to 6 percent or beyond which is hugely impossible to go unnoticed with current IAEA inspection arrangement.

Although Nantanz enrichment facility has capacity for 54,000 centrifuges, Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for research and development purposes to alleviate West’s unfounded suspicion. Europe will naturally come to term with hugely cultured and peaceful Iranian nation very soon; only it needs to get rid of its US blinders.

Information

Bush and his acolytes are busy cooking stories to hoodwink the world community to advance their own agenda under the influence of diaboli-cal fanatic Zionist lobby in Washington. Sheer stren-gth of Iran’s argument and honesty of purpose can defeat these liars to bring peace, stability and security to the Gulf region as well as the world along with a just international order as a by product of a principled stand.